sweet day

These are the kind of days when not much can seem wrong in my world, when wisps of ideas, forgotten pleasures and images come to form a very serene, very dreamy kind of mood.

I am quite aware that it is Mother’s Day. I’ve always loved this day, maybe because it focuses on small pleasures on a day off from work in the middle of May – what’s not to like! And today, I wake up to a sunny, warm enough Sunday, with the smell of freshness still around me and I think – it smells like a day in your country house, the one you have in the north woods or the south of France, or wherever your idle thoughts have carried you over the years.

Yes, it’s Sunday, so I do have to do the house cleaning routines. I turn on the opera, open the windows and finish with lemon oil on the kitchen table. Yes, it takes a little longer to clean this place, but I don’t yet mind.


 



Keeping it fresh has value for me. And, I’m not the only mother along this road working today...







Ed and I finish up the curtain rod project and we hang some paintings on the walls as well... the final strands of this stage of the reconstruction.

And we take our breakfast to the porch. We’ve had ideas on what to do with this outdoor space, but right now we’re a little reluctant to undertake anything big again. Construction burnout has set in.





As we linger beneath the wooden eaves and watch an occasional paper wasp return to her nest there, I am convinced that I am back in the old world across the ocean, some more distant place where there will be an outdoor meal and after that we’ll sip Muscadet and talk about how the vineyard is doing.

Isis, happy to be included on the morning meal, sniffs my muesli and kefir and retreats.





No vineyard here, true, but there are many weeds in the yard to dig out and I want to plant some freesia bulbs and finish filling the giant clay pots.

In the later afternoon I get on the motorbike with Ed and we go to our favorite café, just up the road from us, just as we so often do for a late day pause. He eats soup, I drink my frothy espresso and we go through the papers lying around the place. It’s a good thing that the café (EVP) closes these days early or we’d stay into the hours of dusk, then wonder where the day has gone.

I talk to one daughter who is away on the east coast today, and the other who’ll be coming over for supper this evening and I think the day could not be a whole lot better than this.

A happy day to all mothers out there. Such a sweet idea for a holiday, isn’t it?